What I still find baffling is why both pilots kept pulling back on the controls and barely ever tried to trim the forces off.
I'd imagine if I felt the nose heavy (whether it was MCAS at it or not) I'd trim up, which would alleviate the forces AND stop MCAS. Do the pilots just give up trimming up at some point?
FO reported manual trim didn't work. Later on, we see electric trim up as though they'd re-energized the cutouts as a last resort to get the nose up, but the amount of trim used was negligible? Then MCAS with regained access went ahead and sent the plane into its final dive.
Something that I haven't seen pointed out in this thread is that with the MAX, Boeing changed stab trim cutout philosophy from the NG. Previously you'd have 2 switches, MAIN ELEC and AUTOPILOT channels, self explanatory. Now they are PRI and BU for Primary and Backup whereby the cutout of any of them leaves you with absolutely no electric trim, precisely what you don't need when they implement an automatic system capable of limitless authority over the horizontal stabilizer. One would think previous design would work better with MCAS (disable autopilot trim channel via cutout and keep the ability to use the electric trim).
Just my 2c.